GAZA STRIP -- Israeli intelligence officers have reportedly called Palestinian fighters in Gaza before drone strikes and offered them a stark choice: climb to a rooftop and be killed alone, or remain inside a shelter and be bombed together with their families.

The report by the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat on Sunday was corroborated by Israeli outlets and has drawn fresh scrutiny to the methods behind Israel's targeted killings.

The practice, which Palestinian field sources told the newspaper has occurred at least five times in the past three months, was described as a form of direct execution and intimidation rather than any gesture of restraint.

The most recent case involved Muhammad Alyan al-Bayouk, a 33-year-old killed by an Israeli drone in Khan Yunis on Wednesday afternoon.

According to relatives cited in the report, al-Bayouk received a phone call from a Shin Bet officer who told him to go up to the roof of the shelter where his family was living so he could be killed alone, or remain inside and be bombed along with them.

Al-Bayouk chose the roof. A missile fired from the drone killed him. One of his aunts, who tried to stop him from leaving the family's room, was seriously injured.

The Israeli military later identified al-Bayouk as a member of Hamas's elite Nukhba Force and said he was one of four operatives killed in strikes across southern Gaza on Wednesday.

The sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that all the documented cases involved activists, not senior commanders. The contrast drawn in the report is stark: activists are called and given a choice, while senior and prominent field leaders are assassinated through heavy strikes involving multiple missiles and loitering drones, even at the cost of large numbers of civilian lives.

The sources emphasized that the phone calls "do not mean that the occupation is showing mercy toward Palestinians or attempting to improve its image before the world".

The report also revealed that similar tactics are used against Palestinian detainees. According to the sources, prisoners are threatened with the killing of their relatives if they refuse to provide security information during interrogations, and in some cases they are shown photographs of their children and relatives after they have been killed to exert psychological pressure.

The Times of Israel noted that the Shin Bet and the military declined to comment, and that while the security establishment has not publicly admitted to striking ordinary targets in this manner, such operations have been understood to have occurred in the past.

Ynet reported that a relative of al-Bayouk who was present at the scene confirmed the account, while several other family members declined to comment.

The Palestinian Information Center stated that the phone calls themselves represent a propaganda effort to portray a death threat as a humanitarian measure, shifting responsibility for the killing onto the victim's "choice" rather than those who ordered the strike.

The center noted that a phone call does not stop an assassination, eliminate the threat, or make a killing lawful, and that forcing someone to choose between dying away from their family and exposing loved ones to danger amounts to intimidation and psychological coercion.

The report emerged amid intensifying scrutiny of civilian deaths in Gaza. More than 100 non-governmental organizations have accused Israel of continuing to kill and injure Palestinians daily despite the October 2025 ceasefire, with more than 1,400 Palestinians killed since the truce took effect, including at least 327 children.

The NGOs warned that the ceasefire "exists only in name" and that assassinations and deprivations in Gaza must not be normalized under the pretext of a ceasefire agreement.